


Continuum

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Immortality, Kindness, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:22:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: The start of immortality is like a second childhood, but Nile is already too old to be comfortable with not knowing what she'll be when she grows up.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 66
Kudos: 379





	Continuum

It takes Nile months to ask the question - and a glass of straight gin. They're in Gibraltar, a break after their first mission from Copley's intel, at that point where the relaxing is almost but not quite starting to feel like laziness. They've got a villa high up on a hill that has breathtaking views and while the courtyard's got a table and chairs for meals and loungers to doze on close to the house, they've all staked out parts of the extended space for themselves because it's too nice to stay inside to be alone. Which means going to find Nicky at the eastern corner is a deliberate choice and she sought permission to sit down next to him and try to see into the darkness to figure out where the dark Atlantic meets the night sky.

"Will I always be alone?" 

She realizes it's a vague question that could be taken a thousand ways that aren't what she means - or at least aren't what she means right now. But while she can try to explain, she thinks Nicky understands by the way he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, eyes still on the invisible horizon. 

"You will be as alone as you want to be," he says after a long moment. He turns to her, a small smile on his face that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Don't look at us as we are now and think those are your only options. Your own path is yours to decide and there is _so much_ between the extremes you have been presented with. We weren't who we were a hundred years ago, two hundred, five hundred… You aren't destined for a happy fate or a sad one. You get to decide. We all do." 

Booker is absent from their presence, but present in their thoughts. His exile seems a technicality some days. 

"You will figure out what not being alone means to you," Nicky goes on. "Right now, it means a husband - or a wife, I don't presume. In a hundred years, in two hundred, it might mean something else. You might find someone to spend a few decades with or you might decide that that kind of relationship is not what you want at all."

She looks over sharply. "Spend a few decades with? Like, be with someone as they grow old and we don't? We can do that?" 

Everything that has happened to her since Andy kidnapped her from Camp Leatherneck has been on the explicit premise that they must walk alone through time, apart from the world they no have a place in. Nicky suggesting that that's not the case feels almost like a betrayal, like the revelation of a lie, and she's not sure she's the only patsy here. She's not sure if all of them are. 

Nicky shrugs and it's not a casual gesture. "Andy's done it many times, although not in the last couple of centuries. She's gone for more ephemeral pleasures of late, which is why I can't tell you to go talk to her now." 

Nile's still trying to formulate a response to the first part when the second hits. "Wait, Andy's not off getting drunk somewhere?"

Andy goes out a few times a week in the evenings with a warning not to wait up. Nile had assumed she was off to hit the bars and the miserable groaning in the morning over pots of black coffee seemed to bear that out. 

But Nicky's laugh is genuine and a little dirty. "Our Andromache is undoubtedly getting drunk somewhere, but with the intent on not ending the night alone. Her inability to avoid a hangover might be new, but her predator instincts are not." 

Nile shakes her head, trying to square the idea with the single-minded warrior she met while also remembering Booker maybe-in-hindsight-not-joking about Andy and Rodin. "Damn, woman." 

Nicky grins at her. "We're more complicated creatures than you've seen so far."

She gives him a look. "You all have been _plenty_ complicated. I stepped out of the Sandbox and into a soap opera." 

He tilts his head, allowing the correction. "More faceted, perhaps. We have fuller lives than fighting and dying and living like fugitives."

Which is meant to be a promise and a comfort, she thinks, but it's mostly abstract because fighting and dying and living like fugitives is pretty much all they've done since she's been with them. The idea of living centuries like this is exhausting and she knows intellectually that the others haven't and they don't plan to start, but she's got no experience otherwise. 

"You can be who you want to be, Nile," Nicky says again with emphasis. "And if you want to change your mind, you can do that, too. This thing that makes us what we are, it doesn't make us _who_ we are. At least not for a few hundred years and then only in ways we let it." 

There's a lot here that Nicky's not saying and Nile's aware that she doesn't understand enough to ask the right questions. But if she's got juniper-flavored courage to broach the topic at all, she might as well use it. 

"Then what happened to Booker?" 

Nicky nods like he expected the question. "Booker had a terrible experience that wounded him so deeply he never recovered," he says with a sad sigh. "He was frozen in that moment. Whether he couldn't escape or he didn't want to or if we should have done more… that's what we have a century to come to terms with, all of us. 

"But whatever you do, Nile, please don't look at him as your future. His family was cruel in their pain and he has been aching for two hundred years because of it, but it isn't always like that. It isn't _usually_ like that. All of us, we've known people who have known our secret and most of them have accepted it as a… curiosity, maybe, or a blessing. Sometimes even a curse. But what Booker saw, what he experienced… We expected to have to hold him together after his children died, but we didn't expect his sons to wield the blades as they did. To be wolves."

The blame and guilt and anger from the others that surrounds anything to do with Booker, that she's used to. But she's surprised about the anger that bubbles forth from within _herself_.

"Then why did you tell me never to talk to my family again if Booker's was the exception? Why did you get me to ask Copley to make me KIA?" 

It comes out so sharply that both she and Nicky lean back at the force of it. But she's furious out of nowhere and it feels righteous and justified. She cut herself off from everything she knows, from everyone she loves, and it wasn't _necessary_? 

Nicky looks down at his hands, then back up at her. "Because letting you go back to your family wouldn't have been a kindness. It might have done to you what was done to Booker and we didn't want that for you." 

"You didn't want that for _yourselves_ ," she spits out, feeling on fire with rage. "My mom and my brother are _good people_ and they love me and they wouldn't have asked me for something I couldn't give. They wouldn't hate me for what I am. They aren't _wolves_." 

She starts pushing off the ground to stand and Nicky reaches for her wrist, holding her gently but firmly enough to keep her from rising. She pulls free from his grip and he lets her, but she doesn't stand up because Nicky's looking at her with such _sadness_ that it pierces the armor of her anger for just long enough to lose her momentum. She stays crouched, waiting to see what happens next. 

"They wouldn't hate you," he agrees softly. "But you'd hate _yourself_. Going back wouldn't be a comfort to you because all you'd see is a timer counting down until you had to leave again. It would be a constant reminder of what would be coming and you would not find peace in it. Just heartbreak." 

She drops out of her crouch so gracelessly Nicky reaches out to steady her and she lets him because she knows he's speaking the truth. She's thought about going home anyway, despite the folded flag and the empty coffin's burial at Arlington next to her Dad in the plot her mother had reserved for herself. And she's thought about what she'd have to do to get away with it, how long she'd have and what she would want to do in the time she had to do it. But right now every image in her head has a giant NBA shot clock in the corner counting down and she knows, she _knows_ , that that's how it would go. She'd live that life with one eye on the clock and it would dominate everything else and she'd be furious at herself for wasting something so precious. 

"You are a bright light, Nile," Nicky continues after a moment. "This existence will dim it some no matter what we do to protect you or how well we teach you to protect yourself. But your light is beautiful and we didn't want to snuff it out so quickly. Maybe we are being selfish in that and if we are, I apologize. Truly. We didn't mean to be." 

She wants to hold on to the fury, to be angry at Nicky and the others for running her life while pretending not to, to be angry at Booker for how he's made a mess of her by proxy, but she can't. None of that's true, at least not in the ways she wants it to be. 

The rage melts away and she's left feeling empty and a little dizzy from the emotional roller coaster and the gin and she lets Nicky pull her into a one-armed embrace, her forehead against his neck and his arm around her shoulders. 

They watch the water and the sky and she can see red and green blips that are probably cargo ships in the distance. 

"I don't know how to imagine my future," she says in barely a whisper. "I don't want to be Booker and I can't be you or Joe and Andy scares the crap out of me most of the time. You can tell me that I can pick my own future and I'll believe you, but I can't see it." 

A squeeze of her shoulders. "Neither could I," Nicky says and she feels it as a rumble in his chest as much as she hears it. "I don't think any of us could, although I've never talked about it with Andy and if I'd tried I think she'd have told me she doesn't remember."

Andy's memory lapses are frequently convenient and it makes Nile smile a bit to realize that it's not just something Andy does with her, that Andy's exhaustion with the past isn't recent and it frustrates someone else. 

"You had Joe," she says and she's not sure if it comes out as envious as it sounds in her head. 

Nicky makes a noise that's usually accompanied by a dismissive gesture, but he doesn't move here. "I had Joe, but not like you think I had Joe. We weren't as we are now for a very long time. We weren't _friends_ for a very long time, let alone anything that came after, and it was a long and lonely and _scary_ road before then for the both of us. To be trapped in this life, cut off from the heaven you've been told is yours for serving God, no idea what has happened to you or why, and the only thing you know for sure is that your enemy - your _God_ 's enemy - is here with you, as furious with you as he is with himself…" 

He trailed off with a shudder and Nile kind of headbutts his neck in sympathy and she can feel him chuckle. 

"Joe and I did not start this journey together with any notion of what we would become and if you'd told us we would not have believed you," he says. "We might have tried to kill you instead because it would have been a terrible insult. So maybe it is for the best that we had no idea - and that you don't, either."

She thinks back to that first night, of Nicky talking about destiny, and realizes that she'd completely missed everything he'd been saying. 

"I can't promise you that the future won't hurt you," he goes on. "I can probably promise you that it will. But the road ahead of you, the path you can't imagine right now, might wind up leading to something wondrous that you would turn down if offered to you now because you aren't ready for it. You will change and you will grow and possibilities that seem inconceivable now - might even seem repulsive now - could turn out to be everything you've ever wanted."

It's a nice idea and she wants to hold on to it as a talisman against the odds of her following Booker's or Andy's paths - or Quynh's. But she also realizes that Nicky's not telling her that she could follow his or Joe's paths if she wants to, that's not his point. He's telling her she can forge her own path, unique and untraveled by any of them and suited best for her. Which is nice in theory but kind of terrifying in practice and she says as much. 

"Our worlds used to be very small," he says in reply. "A boy grew up to take his father's profession, a girl grew up to become a mother, and it was only a few who ever traveled more than a few miles from where they'd been born. The land beyond that little circle was a mystery - the next town might as well have been another country."

"And if you were on the Mediterranean, it probably _was_ another country," Joe says, coming into Nile's vision on silent feet. 

She makes to pull away from Nicky, feeling some kind of guilt for she isn't sure what - it's not like she's been hitting on him or that she'd ever dream of trying to come between him and Joe, if that were even possible. Nicky takes his hand off her shoulder to let her go but doesn't drop his arm and she takes that as permission to stay, maybe encouragement, and she does. She's still feeling vulnerable and Nicky is warm. His hand returns to her shoulder, his thumb rubbing the bone soothingly, and she tries not to tear up. Joe wears his heart on his sleeve, never leaving a doubt about what he's thinking or feeling. Andy is a wall so strong and so high you have no idea what's on the other side. Booker bleeds everywhere, even when he's laughing. She used to think Nicky was like the duck on a pond - smooth on the surface, paddling furiously underneath - but she's coming to realize that that's not it at all. He's an open ledger, too, but in a language she is still learning the words for and he's too nice to tell her she's been misreading him all along. 

Joe sits down across from them after first setting down a tea service on a tray. There are three cups and she's a little relieved that Joe came out knowing she was here. She has spent plenty of time with both of them on their own, but not like this, seeking one out away from the other and under cover of darkness however innocent the context. But neither of them seems to think it's worth so much as a comment and she absorbs this, too. 

She accepts a cup and saucer from Joe, who poured the tea with a flourish. 

"Joe was a traveler before he died," Nicky says, accepting his own cup with his free hand. "He'd met many different people and seen many different things in many different places. I had thought I was worldly being from _la Dominante dei mari_ , but it was the difference between looking out a window on to a busy street and being on the sidewalk. I had heard many languages spoken but understood almost none of them. I spoke the languages of my parishioners and the language of my God and it wasn't until I went on crusade that I saw that I was as a mute in the world, a simpleton. In many ways, all of which kept me from imagining a future in which my inability to die had a purpose beyond glorifying His name by spilling the blood of his enemies."

Joe smiles fondly. "You still think that's the reason, caro mio. You've just updated the definitions." 

Nicky makes a noise that could be protest or could be grudging agreement but is mostly a vibration against Nile's ribs. 

"You come from a very ordered life," Joe says to her. "And all of the structures that ordered that life have been taken away. You are still learning how to walk on your own, which is a terrifying thing to do. But you're not alone. We both fell on our faces plenty of times until we learned to help each other - and to accept help from each other. You will undoubtedly be less stubborn than we were in this regard."

He leans forward then and smiles. "And if Nicky makes it sound like I was running when he was crawling, it's a lie," he stage-whispers before leaning back. "We were just stumbling over different stones." 

They sit there with their tea and it could be thoughtful or maudlin, but Joe starts telling a story that starts in the Twelfth Century but turns out to be an ode to modern pants. Nicky eggs him on by defending some of the fashion of yore, knowing exactly what will set Joe off and enjoying it, looking over at Nile and grinning every time. She knows this is at least partly for her benefit as a distraction and pick-me-up and a way to remind her that she's got wisdom that they had to learn the hard way. But she is coming to understand that the guys honestly enjoy having an audience to tell their stories. To show each other off, which is kinda adorable, but also to simply share what's in their own heads - nine hundred years of bearing witness to the incredible and the mundane and having to keep it all to themselves must be frustrating. She supposes she'll find out in her own time and the thought would normally make her scared or angry, but right now it's okay and she's grateful to the guys for making it so. 

Eventually there's a yawn (hers) and false outrage (Joe) and Nicky reasserts ownership of his 'domain' and shoos them both away. Joe won't let her carry any of the tea service and actually races her back to the house so she can't hold the door open for him. (He loses.) But once they're in the kitchen, they realize that they're short a saucer - Nicky had abandoned his by his knee, Nile remembers, and they forgot to put it back on the tray - and Joe doesn't tell her not to go when she offers to retrieve it. 

Nicky's noticed the saucer by the time she gets back out there; it's sitting on his other side, where she'd been, as he looks up at the sky. 

"I learned to read the stars as a child," he says as she draws close, his face still tilted up. "To know their names, to navigate by them. I know that science tells us that they have moved since then, but they still look the same to me. I find that a comfort most days, to have things I knew from before still be true. The constellations are all threads that tie me to my beginnings by the sea."

He looks over at her and smiles, then looks down to pick up the saucer. 

"You will find your own constellations," he tells her as he hands it over. "You won't lose your past when you discover your future. We are big enough inside to contain both." 

He taps his heart with his now-free hand and Nile shakes her head. 

"Does Joe know that you are only letting him think he's the poet out of you two?" she asks instead of saying 'thank you,' which feels a little insufficient. But the look in his eyes says he heard it anyway.

"Of course he does," he answers with a smile that might be at her evasion or could be for Joe. "But he is better suited to the role, so it is his." 

She uses the last of her gin-fueled bravery to lean down and kiss his cheek. "Goodnight, Nicky." 

The smile is clearly for her this time. "Buonanotte, sorellina."

**Author's Note:**

> [A notice for this story was posted to tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there](https://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/628175261928685568/continuum-domenika-marzione-domarzione-the)


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